Before Our Paints and Portraits
by AnonWriter27
Summary: A short intermission story about what happened before John met Sherlock, and why Sherlock Holmes seemed slightly familiar.


A/N: My wonderful best friend painted a portrait of Sherlock for me and it absolutely deserved a story.

"Nothing happens to me."

That much, John thinks, is true because after Afghanistan there was nothing. Nothing except the scars of war that the enlistment booths didn't warn bled every day.

"Try to remember your London, John," the therapist encouraged.

"My London wasn't as cruel," he replied in a hollow tone.

John was another war veteran, as pained and wounded as the lot of them. The therapist looked at him sadly, and in one brief moment, might have checked in the window if she was starting to look the same.

'Pain rebounds and reflects,' she thought ', like light."

She turned back to John. "You have to try. Walk around. See the sights you've seen before."

'She is not beautiful,' he noticed unkindly', and I am hopeless.'

When John Watson did not reply, the therapist nodded and told him he could leave.

* * *

Possibly eighteen days later, John started walking –well, limping in his case. He gritted his teeth and refused to let bitter Afghanistan get the better of his leg. The doctor walked the weary concrete of the city. There were the pubs, the vendors, the shops, and the markets. There were the people might never have seen his face and certainly didn't care. He felt London spread out under his feet, a rush of wisdom with epiphanies that came with a price; a price that he thought he was ready to pay.

"A portrait for your gal, sir?," John had now wandered into a more bohemian part of the city with stores that did caricatures and portraits and god-knows-what-else.

"Don't have one. Sorry."

The artist, who looked more like a homeless than a painter, was desperate to sell, even more to impress. He thrust the clenched brush in his hand in front of John who was about to walk away.

"But how about something else? A pretty picture wouldn't do you any harm, eh?," the man joked "See here. This one's a lovely view of the Thames that you'll only get at 5:30 in the wee hours. Or this beauty who used to be…"

Wait. Is that scarlet? Like the blood the slipped between my fingers? And are those the flowers that I haven't seen for so long that I've forgotten their fragrance? This one must be your soul in abstract. Why on earth are you trying to sell it then? I know. Money is always the issue, and you've painted the most beautiful turquoise with all the greens and blues that you'll never see in the sand.

"That one," John pointed to a portrait partly hidden by the shadow of the bricks, "who's that?"

The painter craned his neck, "That's the bloke who always comes here. Saw him swooping in on a murder one night when I was 'bout to nod off to bed, you see. "He looked away from the portrait as if it was a bad memory. "The body was right outside my bedroom window. My flat's on top of this shop, sir. I couldn't see the corpse because of the Yarders scattering about. I only saw him, sir, who stood looking on as if he were God Almighty himself."

The man stood up and walked a few paces out into the street. "Right here. He was. I thought nothing of the entire affair and him until the next day when someone knocked on my door to tell me that my old sister was stabbed on my front porch last night because she wanted to come in and see how I was doing after the counseling."

John had the 'I'm sorry' poised on the insides of his lips but didn't let them go. They never really helped.

"I haven't seen her for nearly two decades so I couldn't remember her face. I couldn't paint her," the artist looked mournfully at John", so I did the man who last saw her. I'm still wishing that maybe I could see her if I got his eyes right."

"Did you ever?," John might have fallen in love with the paint that was as eloquent as spilled ink. ",get the eyes right, I mean."

"No, sadly. I only got the angles."

* * *

"John, is that you? I thought you were at Afghanistan getting shot at? What happened?"

"I got shot."

He couldn't help wonder if it was the bullet; the cheap shot from a rebel that destroyed the muscles of his shoulder, the yarn that held him together. Every step of the way, John was thinking of excuses to politely decline Mike Stamford's pity. He didn't need it. Most of all, John didn't want to go back to St. Barts. He can't bear walking on the floors that were meant for doctors that didn't fuck up like him. There was death and there was failure. And there was pain. Reflecting and rebounding like light.

John followed Mike into one of the newer laboratories, ready to excuse himself with a white lie.

"Have you got your phone? I left mine in the mortuary," A voice like night and velvet mumbled.

The damaged army doctor looked to where the voice was and stopped.

'Like angles and ink' he remembered thinking, taking in the mop of curls that were not as black but with an embrace of brown, the tailored suit and the face that was entirely geometry, the baritone that was as impossibly _inky _as the poor man's painting, and the eyes that the artist did not get right, the eyes that were the Mediterranean and butterscotch and evergreen forests, sharp and piercing as a science fair prism.

"Sherlock, this is my friend John Watson." Mike introduced.

The man named Sherlock scrutinized John Watson first before firing off: "Afghanistan or Iraq?"

"Have you met before?" the portly Stamford asked.

"In coincidences and paintings," John whispered to himself, but judging from the change of light in Sherlock's eyes, they might have.

* * *

Disclaimer: I do not own BBC Sherlock etc.

A/N: Thank you for reading! Reviews are love, love, and love!


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